The present invention relates generally to budgeting devices and, more particularly, to a portable electronic apparatus for planning and executing a budget.
Making and following a personal budget is an important and effective way to control spending and maintain fiscal responsibility. Effectively following a budget requires setting up spending categories and assigning a maximum amount of money that can be spent weekly or monthly in each category in view of expected revenue. Accurate record keeping of expenses is critical to maintaining the budget. Of course, circumstances will sometimes dictate modifying the budget. In other words, unusual circumstances may cause the spending in one category to exceed the budgeted amount and the spending in another category may have to be reduced as a result.
Various devices have been proposed in the art for setting budget categories and tracking expenses. Although assumably effective for their intended purposes, the existing devices do not enable a user to set a predetermined maximum spending amount for multiple categories, input actual spending as it occurs, then observe as each category respectively reflects an amount remaining for spending and, if a category's limit is exceeded, the remaining balance of another predetermined category begins to be reduced.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a portable budgeting apparatus that enables a user to set predetermined spending limits in multiple categories. Further, it would be desirable to have a portable budgeting apparatus for tracking spending and displaying remaining spending balances in each category. In addition, it would be desirable to have a portable budgeting apparatus that deducts from the balance of another predetermined category if the spending limit of a first category is exceeded.